Iran Casts Nuclear Inspectors as Spies in Envoy’s Defiant Speech

By Jonathan Tirone -
Jun 6, 2012

Iran pulled back from an announced
deal to permit expanded international nuclear inspections and
signaled it will take a hard line in the next round of
negotiations over curtailing its nuclear activities.

Iran “will not permit our national security to be
jeopardized” by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors
working for Western intelligence agencies, the nation’s IAEA
envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said yesterday. “Iran will never
suspend its enrichment activities.”

Soltanieh contradicted IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano’s
May 22 announcement after returning from talks in Tehran that a
decision had been made to allow inspectors increased access.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili had only pledged his
country’s “determination” to reach an accord, Soltanieh said
at a press briefing in Vienna.

IAEA officials are scheduled to meet their Iranian
counterparts on June 8 to attempt to conclude the deal for wider
access to sites of suspected atomic weapons work, including the
Parchin military complex. The outlook for those talks -- and for
broader international negotiations scheduled for June 18-19 in
Moscow -- was clouded by Soltanieh’s vow that Iran won’t suspend
uranium enrichment, a key demand by the U.S. and Israel to avert
threatened military strikes.

“Two weeks before the meeting in Moscow, Ambassador
Soltanieh is showing Iran will be defiant,” Mark Hibbs, a
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace nuclear analyst, said
in an interview in Vienna. “That’s not a good development.”

‘U.S. Hostility’

In Beijing, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that Iran has engaged in talks, “but
recent behavior of western side of the nuclear negotiations has
not been encouraging,” according to the state-run Islamic
Republic News Agency. “Western propaganda against Iran’s
nuclear activities or China internal affairs has its roots in
U.S. hostility toward the two countries.”

Soltanieh’s comments in Vienna came as the IAEA’s 35-member
board of governors concluded its quarterly review of the
country’s nuclear work. Iran, the No. 2 producer in the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, says its nuclear
program is peaceful.

IAEA inspectors use intelligence received from member
states to press Iran for answers on its program. The agency
reported in November that it had “credible” intelligence
pointing to Iranian work on a nuclear trigger at the Parchin
complex. The country has subsequently cleaned-up the site, Amano
said on June 4 at a press conference.

Violating Authority

Soltanieh accused the IAEA of violating its authority by
seeking information on military and missile work as well as
making public preliminary details of the country’s enrichment
activities. Iran has been subject to more than 4,000 man-days of
IAEA inspections, including about 100 surprise visits, since
2003, he said.

“The agency, which is supposed to be an international
technical organization, is somehow playing the role of an
intelligence agency,” he said.

While “optimistic” that a deal can still be struck with
IAEA inspectors, Soltanieh didn’t support Amano’s assertion that
a bargain was imminent. The UN atomic agency’s director
reiterated at the June 4 press conference that Iran’s top
negotiator gave assurances that the remaining differences
between the country and inspectors could be bridged “quite
soon.”

Expanded Inspections

The U.S. ambassador to the 154-nation organization, Robert
Wood, said June 5 that he isn’t optimistic that Iran will agree
to expanded inspections.

“We have all seen this movie many times before with
Iran,” he said. “I certainly hope that an agreement is reached
but I’m not certain Iran is ready.”

Amano’s comments, after his Tehran talks, were received by
regional experts and the oil markets as a sign of easing
tensions ahead of the second round of negotiations over Iran’s
uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities.

Diplomats from China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K. and
the U.S. are scheduled to hold a third round of talks with their
Iranian counterparts in Moscow on June 18-19.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that
the first two rounds, in Istanbul and Baghdad, had advanced the
negotiating process. The Moscow talks can’t be expected to yield
a final agreement and should aim to pave the way for more
discussions, he said.

Limited Time

Lavrov said that imposing new sanctions on Iran will upset
efforts to strike an agreement over its disputed nuclear
program. Iran is facing growing pressure from economic sanctions
as well as from statements by Israeli leaders that their
patience for diplomacy is limited as Iran continues to expand
its stockpile of enriched uranium that could be converted to
bomb fuel.

The U.S. and European Union have slapped financial
sanctions on Iran and are pressuring nations to buy less of its
oil. The EU is set to impose an embargo on Iranian oil on July
1, the kind of move that Lavrov called counterproductive.

“It’s in no one’s interests to go from a negotiating
process to the forceful application of sanctions,” Lavrov told
reporters in Beijing yesterday. “We view new sanctions as
absolutely counterproductive. These sanctions will undermine our
collective efforts.”